Artist impression of Capel EfW

Oct 8, 2008
By Liz Gyekye

Surrey County Council’s planning committee has approved plans to build an energy-from-waste (EfW) facility at Clockhouse Brickworks site in Capel, Surrey. But the plans are subject to a legal challenge to the Surrey Waste Plan, a strategy for dealing with Surrey’s waste, to be heard in January 2009.

Campaigners, Capel Action Group, a campaigning arm of the parish council, fought the plans claiming the EfW facility would create traffic problems and environmental damage and has launched a legal challenge against the Surrey Waste Plan. A Surrey County Council spokesman said the waste plan is a strategy for dealing with Surrey’s waste and to identify sites that “may be appropriate for dealing with Surrey’s waste.”

But Surrey Waste Management general manager Sean Trotter said the decision to approve the planning application was “an important step forward”.

Surrey Waste Management is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sita UK. Surrey Waste Management general manager Sean Trotter said: “We will continue to work with the county council to encourage residents to reduce the amount of waste they generate and recycle as much as possible. However, there will still be thousands of tonnes of waste left over each year that cannot be sensibly recycled and this facility will provide us with a much needed alternative to landfill.”

The plant will have the capacity to take 11,000 tonnes of residual household waste each year from across Surrey.

Trotter added: “Recovering EfW represents the best environmental option for treating the county’s residual household waste. EfW is used successfully in many European countries with high recycling rates such as Sweden and Germany. The proposed facility at Clockhouse Brickworks will provide a safe, efficient and environmentally sustainable way of dealing with residual household waste.”

Capel Action Group campaigner Dino Adriano said: “We are against incineration. We know we need solutions to solve the waste issue but we believe alternative technologies should be sought to mass burn incineration.”

Source: RWMOS